08 March 2005

TEL: ToC

Most of the anthology is of original material, but there is one reprint story, and its presence is enough for me to give you this early warning that I will be hectoring, pestering, admonishing, badgering, nettling, nagging, browbeating, and generally tormenting everyone I encounter to buy this book, because the story being reprinted is Greer Gilman's "Jack Daw's Pack", originally published in the Winter 2000 issue of Century (the website for which has a tiny excerpt).

The story was nominated for a Nebula, and it is utterly unique and bewildering and remarkable. Michael Swanwick interviewed Gilman exhaustively about the story for SF Site, and she says, among other things, "I've taken a lot of flak for my high language. Either people 'bounce off it like an Ent trying to dig into Orthanc' (as Dorothy Heydt said); or they get drunk on it, like wasps on fermenting fruit, and fall over. What I'm trying for is synergy."

"Jack Daw's Pack" is the first in a loose trilogy of which the World Fantasy Award-winning "A Crowd of Bone" is the middle. I heard Gilman read an excerpt from the third story at Pandemonium Books at the end of last year, and she said it was nearly finished, which is great news for those of us who are mesmerized by her words.